Killing ain’t easy, but if you eat meat, you need to get your head around what it takes to eat it. Photo: YouTube//Screenshot
Mark Healey is known in our little circle as one of the best big wave surfers ever to do it. He’s a lot more than that, though — he’s also a champion spearfisherman and bow hunter.
“The draw to bowhunting for me is the connection that it forces you to have,” he explained. “You’re connecting to something that’s been happening with our ancestors for tens of thousands of years, if not longer.”
Now, you would be excused for having certain feelings about hunting. But, in my opinion at least, if you eat meat, the world would be a better place if you couldn’t simply buy a slab of it from the store. Hunting for fish or game (and I need to be clear that I am not talking about trophy hunting here, although that can have some surprising benefits to the overall health of the species being hunted — but simply sustenance hunting. But man cannot live on fish alone. Or he can, I suppose, but it might get a little old.
“I grew up in the water, getting our own fish to eat all the time — we just grew up that way — but it wasn’t until I was older that I started questioning the red meat side of things,” Healey continued. “That got me into bowhunting; the challenge and it’s really a connection to your ancestors and an old way to hunt.”
Of course, things have changed quite a bit since our ancestors were stringing animal sinew onto yew branches and fashioning arrowheads from obsidian or whatever, but some things will never change. Those are the things Healey loves the most.
“Obviously we have more modern bows now, but you just have to learn your environment more,” he said. “You have to be closer and more silent. It’s more demanding of your knowledge of the area. It’s an intimate interaction.”
Growing up in the ocean, Healey didn’t really get up into the mountains all that much until relatively recently.
“It got me into more of the mountainous side of Hawaii, probably like 15 years ago,” he remembered. “I got to see so many amazing places and make so many awesome friends that I would have never known had I not put a bow in my hands. It’s been a big blessing and it really is nice to juxtapose that to the ocean life.”
Perhaps the biggest positive about sustenance hunting is the sustainability of it. Take spearfishing, for example. Sure, you could just go to the store and buy a can of tuna, but that tuna is the result of some pretty monstrous fishing practices that are helping to decimate the planet. Buying meat from the store is the same story. But if Healey shoots one deer? Well, that one deer yields enough meat to feed his family for months. Add that to the fact that axis deer are invasive in Hawaii and are having devastating effects on the delicate ecosystems in the islands, and you’ve got a good way to feed people. If you can stomach what it takes, that is.
“If I take one axis deer with my bow, that lasts months,” Healey said. “And it’s delicious. My daughter loves to eat it, my wife loves to eat it. It’s just an all-around win for me.”
